Day #16: The Serious Work of Being Dead
So, after having missed four days due to being busy, here is my thing:
The Serious Work of Being Dead
After the funeral,
Lying in mineral,
Blood-streamed with chemical –
No piece of chronicle,
No room for madrigal.
So, I’m not even going to dignify this with the word “poem” or even “verse exercise.” Just stringing together some similar sounding words and giving a ridiculous title to it. However, I am impressed that it came out in dactyllic dimiter. How many people do you know who write in dactyllic dimiter?
But, just because I am fascinated with the relationships between writers and readers, I will point this out: look how much we are indebted to to others, even when writing something under 20 words. “Piece of chronicle” is from John Donne’s “Canonization,” and the words chronicle and madrigal together comes from Edmund Blunden’s 1924 collection of John Clare poems Madrigals and Chronicles.